The Cedars was a City of Portland facility established in the 1910s on the poor farm property. Its mission was to "rehabilitate" sporting women. In the mid-1920s, The Cedars was reincarnated as the Bealey Military Academy, and then a decade later, dismantled and rebuilt as the building that today houses Ruby's Spa.

Chris Boyd may have had the longest residency of any poor farm resident, 1931 to 1963. Because he liked to sit and rock on the front porch, Chris assumed the role of Edgefield's unofficial greeter for much of the three-decade period.

The county farm boasted a prize-winning dairy, which remained a cornerstone of the operation until 1969, when the farming was ceased and the herd sold. In the background of this 1950s image are (left to right) the milking barn, hay barn and root cellar/stable. Only the silo of the hay barn (center) and the root cellar/stable remain today.

The Multnomah County Poor Farm was hailed as a model of agricultural efficiency and production. It provided food not only for poor farm residents, but also those of the county jail and hospital. The farm operation finally ceased in 1969.

A deep source of regret for McMenamins was the loss of great barns of the poor farm. Fearing injuries and lawsuits arising from the teenagers roaming the property largely unchecked during the 1980s, the county had the well-preserved barns torn down shortly before Mike and Brian bought the property. Here is the milking barn as it looked in 1980.

Wild blackberries consumed much of the Edgefield property during its vacant period of the 1980s. Entire outbuildings disappeared. Here the old greenhouse is threatened. The tangled quagmire in the foreground is where the present herb garden is laid out.

Gardens were part of McMenamins' initial rejuvenation of Edgefield in the 1990s. Here the herb garden is being laid out on the north side of the greenhouse. Vintage photos show that a flower garden was in this same spot in decades past.

In the early 1990s, McMenamins removed this transformer to make room for the outdoor dining and event area known as the Loading Dock. The transformer was memorialized in one of the earliest brews made at Edgefield, called Transformer Ale.

"We took what was there at Edgefield and tucked a golf course into it." That's how Patrick McNurney explains the original layout for the Pub Course. Patrick helped in the course's design and construction. At the debut of the course on August 31, 1998, Mike McMenamin sunk his first hole-in-one ever.